Rage Against the Machine roars at L.A. Rising

It isn't so contradictory to insist that L.A. Rising this past weekend at the Coliseum boasted irrefutably strong, even great performances across the board, yet still didn't completely come together as an event. I and surely plenty others can recall at least a couple days at Coachella where a handful of unforgettable performances took place amid what was otherwise a forgettable festival experience.

My reaction is evenly split over Rage Against the Machine's daylong consciousness-expanding celebration, surely to be among the biggest concerts of the year in Southern California, ranking just behind Goldenvoice's annual Indio fests (including Stagecoach) and U2's two nights at Angel Stadium in terms of attendance. The total from L.A. Rising organizers: 60,000. That's a ton of people, but it wasn't enough to fill the available seats, let alone provide reason to remove the black banding and giant red star from the chairs in the far upper decks of Coliseum (though what a fantastic effect that was).

Such a huge-but-not-super-huge turnout was a little baffling and disheartening to discover, all the more so considering the high quality of the complete roster.

Muse, the new Queen, essentially held co-headlining position alongside Rage; take another look at the lineup poster. Frankly, frontman Matt Bellamy (Kate Hudson's new babydaddy) and his English mates, bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard, are big enough to do this sort of thing on their own, particularly in the greater L.A. area. If their stretch of arena shows last year didn't already prove it, they reinforced how ready for it they are repeatedly Saturday night with a heavy yet shimmering set of operatic sci-fi rock so bombastically attractive, so melodically enveloping, it could make the Rose Bowl seem as intimate as the Greek.

Add to that:

• A hearty turn from Chicago punk band Rise Against, more earnestly energetic and fuller-sounding than ever, if also just as monotonous. Feeble at first, their set gained momentum as it went along, their occasional Third Eye Blind-isms blasted aside by the holler of “Audience of One.”

• A nonstop, hits-stuffed jam from a ravishing Lauryn Hill, who iced her assortment (“Everything Is Everything,” “That Thing”) with two choice Stevie Wonder covers, “Blame It on the Sun” and “Master Blaster (Jamming).” As usual, her mixer was either just-hired or needs to take better notes, for here was another choppy start filled with feedback. But she and her band quickly found their footing as the sun bore down, and despite some horribly dated visual effects on the giant screens, what developed was an astonishing show of strength, seeing as the 36-year-old gave birth to her 6th child only a week earlier.

• And a verbally blistering assault from Immortal Technique, Peruvian-born Harlem rapper who is among the most thought-provoking in the game; his unnerving peers into the disenfranchised side of American life were the only ones from the day on par with what Rage has to say in song. (Tech's set also had a great guest shot from Chino XL. Plus, from Monterrey, Mexico, the lively rock of El Gran Silencio kicked off the day, though their opening half-hour at 3 p.m. played like an aperitif while I was getting acquainted with the grounds.)

Entry price for all of that: $100. So where was the onslaught of people clamoring to get in?

Did part of the problem in pushing tickets center on how many people could get general-admission access? Some (OK, many) people find that crucial to achieving the complete Rage experience. Once those limited tickets were sold out, was it a harder sell to get people to sit in the stands?

As it was, I'd argue the compromise between band and city officials that determined the amount of people permitted on the floor was a balanced one. Even as Muse took the stage, it might have seemed on the sparsely populated side. But once Zack de la Rocha (top) led Rage through eruptive versions of “A Bullet in the Head” and “Killing in the Name” – sparking more than a dozen mosh pits that rapidly accelerated to cyclonic terror levels simultaneously (including one occasionally filled with flames) – well, the decision to take precautions against overcrowding began to look like a wise one.

More than once I saw a seriously crazy paraplegic dude get happily hoisted into the air, wheelchair and all, to crowd surf. If you're gonna be cool about that happening, you've gotta plan in advance for some extra space.

So could the high-but-low turnout be blamed on people simply disliking attending concerts at the home of the '84 Summer Olympics? Perhaps because it still feels like 1984 inside?

Forget last year's controversy over Electric Daisy Carnival at this location. These folks are on the side of the EDC: they accept the unfortunate fact that at edgier events like these sometimes one person out of 185,000 winds up overdosing. Happens to the best of concerts.

It's a testament to the bond Rage has with its voracious fans, actually, that whenever the world's most volatile rock band is placed in a professional concert setting (political conventions are another matter), things most definitely go off – and also go according to plan. I witnessed security assisting attendees, not accosting them. Makes me wonder to what degree Rage is engaged on those details; I suspect the answer is very.

Even had there been less careful planning, there still wasn't reason for concern. Woodstock '99 was a shambles on so many levels, but the one thing I'll always take away from it was how Rage Against the Machine's performance – the very definition of galvanizing – pulled together hundreds of thousands of people whose mood had turned collectively ugly that Saturday night outside Syracuse.

Only an hour or two before Rage came on, Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst had been unforgivably belligerent, inciting palpable hostility and leaving behind a heavy whiff of pent-up testosterone. Those of us on the grass didn't know at the time that girls were getting mauled and raped down in the pit, but we could sense something wasn't right. The masses seemed to seethe as the sky grew dark. Then Rage took the stage – and somehow all of us on that field were unified into one leaping, chanting, frenzied tsunami of humanity.

That happened again Saturday night at the Coliseum, and it was a wondrous sight to see. Thousands of people (OK, mostly guys) scurrying like rats in transparent cages, unleashing fury not at each other so much as into the night air. All the while, Rage performed with fervency I've rarely seen before, from them or anyone. They were as fierce as at Woodstock '99 but far more jubilant in the moment; you could even catch Zack smiling. They were just as re-energized as Coachella, maybe, yet they were far louder here.

So monstrous, in fact, that it seemed to immediately blow the PA, silencing everything for brief moments in the opening “Testify.” Sadly, the first time happened just as Zack stepped to the mic. “Do over!” shouted the guy behind me, while all I could think of was how this could have been Coachella all over again.

I loved that reunion performance – it was impassioned and punchy, on-edge and relevant. But you couldn't really feel it unless you were damn close to the stage. It was a relief at the Coliseum when the PA kicked back on – and stayed on, at mega volume and with the aural clarity between voices and instruments that finally starting clicking sometime during Rise Against's set.

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